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I’m so tired, so very tired, of being told I’m ignorant, racist and bigoted for speaking up against Islam. We’ve reached a point now where when you point out that the central doctrines of Islam include making war on infidels, mutilating children, subjugating women, and murdering apostates, people scramble to say “No, no, that’s just a few EXTREMISTS, #NotAllMuslims are like that!” Well yeah, I never said all Muslims are like that, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore the clear call to violence inherent in the religion that causes people to murder others. There’s literally a gay holocaust being carried out in Chechnya right now, and the leader of the country said he will, quote, “wipe out the gay community by Ramadan,” but everyone is pretending like Islam has NOTHING to do with it.

I know that there are good Muslims in the world. There are also good Christians in the world. But that doesn’t erase the calls to violence, slavery and subjugation that are present in the Quran. I try to speak out against women wearing burqas because they’re commanded to keep their flesh covered so that they won’t tempt men, and people tell me that I’m being bigoted, and then somehow have the nerve to do such mental gymnastics as to say that burqas are actually LIBERATING garments and tokens of feminism. I try and say that we should be taking seriously the homophobia present in Islam that contributed to gay people being put into concentration camps in Chechnya, and people tell me I’m just being racist, that I’m ignorant and don’t understand that Islam is a religion of peace.

And the weirdest thing is that the people arguing with me are NEVER Muslims. Not one Muslim has come up to me and told me I’m wrong, it’s always non-Muslims who are being offended on behalf of Muslims, because it’s become politically correct to defend Islam. Well I’m not playing that game. Religion kills people, religions poisons people, it stops conversation and free inquiry, and if the only thing I can do is to stand up and talk about it, or even shout about it, then that’s what I’ll do. But Islam is a philosophy, not an ethnicity. So it doesn’t make me racist to call out Islam for it’s very real prescriptions to violence, misogyny, homophobia and subjugation.

A man will murder someone and shout “I’m doing this in the name of Islam!” and people will all respond “Well clearly that guy wasn’t a REAL Muslim, he’s misinterpreting Islam.” No, take him at his word! He’s doing what he was told to by Islam. And it’s the same thing when Christians lynch black people or murder gay people, and then say they’re doing it because it’s what the Bible says. People respond by saying “Well they’re misunderstanding the Bible, they’re not TRUE Christians.” No, take them at their word, they’re doing it BECAUSE of what the Bible says to do! It’s the same with Islam.

Protecting people from profiling and hate speech is important, I understand. We don’t want to create a culture in which all Muslim PEOPLE are treated as reprobates. And I don’t want that either. And I don’t think that of Muslim PEOPLE. But I do think that Islam itself as a philosophy is abbhorent. And to even say that out loud now results in me being labeled Islamophobic. Maybe I am Islamophobic. The word itself would imply fear of Islam. I am afraid of Islam! I’m afraid for the world. And it isn’t just Islam that I’m afraid of, I’m afraid of Christianity too, and any religion that tells it’s followers to kill and enslave others. But if I speak out against it, people roll their eyes and say “No, that’s just the actions of a few extremists.” Yeah, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s there IN their religious texts. You can say gay men aren’t being killed in Chechnya because of Islam but because of homophobia. But the homophobia comes about BECAUSE of religion. And if we’re going to have an honest dialogue about the murder of gay people, we have to be willing to call out the philosophies that lead to it.

So yeah. I’m tired of being called a bigot because I see something terrible happening and I call it out and say that it’s wrong. And I know that the blog and Facebook feed of one American white boy isn’t going to fix the world, end homophobia, or stop religion from murdering people, but I can’t just sit here and be silent when people are dying.

If you haven’t heard of Welcome to Night Vale, it’s a podcast that tells the story of a creepy desert town where Lovecraftian horrors exist alongside everyday people, and the madness that ensues. It’s normally told through radio broadcasts, narrated by the voice of Night Vale, radio presenter Cecil Palmer. While listening to several episodes, I was really amused by a lot of the humour, and just started writing down some notes for jokes of my own that I thought would fit into an episode, and before I knew it I had a brief little fan episode written out. So I thought I’d share it with you. Enjoy!

Roses are red. Violets are red. Red is everywhere. Everything is red and there is no going back.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Good mourning Night Vale. Good morning to you, and to all the other mourners in the procession of mourning. Mourning is a good thing. Only through mourning can we heal and grow and find the strength to live.

City council has announced that the ancient temple on the outskirts of town, hidden deep and unreachable within a cluster of trees whose oaken trunks are older perhaps than time itself, will be demolished to make way for a parking lot. The parking lot will not be attached to any businesses or attractions, and will also be unreachable. As always, any attempts to park cars in a parking lot will remain illegal.

Wednesday is currently lost. Because of this absence of a day of the week, a time vortex has opened in the town square, which threatens to engulf the entire town. The sheriff’s secret police have promised a reward for the safe return of Wednesday, or any information leading to the recapture of Wednesday. Remember that if you find Wednesday, it is be to returned to the sheriff’s secret police alive, or else you will be unable to claim the bounty, and the time vortex will consume us all.

The body shop is offering a two for one sale for a limited time. Any body you purchase will come with a second body of equal or lesser value.

The Night Vale PTA bake sale has raised just a hair over $300. Really. The bake sale brought in $300 and a long stand of hair. Dark hair. Hair that looks suspiciously like the dark hair of that girl you met in college. You know the one. You shared an intimate night together and forgot to get one another’s names, and the next day you saw her on the front page of the school paper, momentarily excited to learn her name before you realized that the story was about an annual memorial for a girl who had been hit by a bus years before, and who you discovered had in fact lived in your very dorm room.

The bake sale continue tomorrow, but city council would like to remind you that there will be metal detectors. Anyone found to contain traces of common bodily metals will be detained indefinitely.

Listeners, I don’t often talk about the details of my personal life, being a radio professional and all, but since Carlos vanished into a desert otherworld, he’s only been able to communicate by occasional phone calls, or by drips of strange blue liquid, leaking from my ceiling, landing on the kitchen floor in rhythmic drops resembling Morse code. And frankly, I’m feeling a bit down about the whole thing. With Valentine’s day just around the corner, I know that many listeners will be feeling lonely as well. After all, Valentine’s day can be difficult for those of us with significant others, as we are required each Valentine’s day to sacrifice whoever or whatever it is we love most in the world to the creature in Grove Park, only to have them returned to us the next day, changed in unspeakable ways. But this year I won’t be able to make my offering, because the person about whom I care most is currently trapped in a desert otherworld.

I crawl into bed at night, look over to my nightstand where, amongst my collection of antique doll heads and bone-hewn knives from the Before Times, sits the stethoscope that Carlos gave me on our anniversary. I myself don’t quite understand how to use a stethoscope, after all who has the time to bother learning how to properly throw stones at passing birds with a stethoscope, as is customary in science, but I always enjoy listening to Carlos explain it to me. Sometimes it’s nice just to hear his silky voice, even if I don’t understand what he’s saying. Carlos, if you’re listening to this broadcast, know that I miss you, and I eagerly await your next coded message, dropping in blue rivulets into an undulating quivering mass on the kitchen floor.

The absence of Carlos has caused me to spend a lot of time thinking about hope, dear listeners. Hope is a fickle thing. When it is absent, we despair and long for its presence, lamenting that we’ve lost something we didn’t at first realize we had. And then, over time, we find that we had hope after all, only it was a tiny hope, a little flame that burned in our chests, growing larger and larger, photosynthesizing the sunlight of our thoughts and pumping out the will to continue. When we wake up one morning to discover we have hope, it can be alarming. After all, after you’ve lived so long without any hope at all, how are you to deal with finally having it?

Being able to see a light at the end of a tunnel is, in its own way, more difficult than giving up, and accepting the endless darkness of the tunnel. But hope is a responsibility, a responsibility to ourselves. It is a gift we are given by that little flame within us, which always burns, no matter how small it becomes, and we must hold hope, burning and sometimes singing our weary fingers, and carry it with us. It can sometimes be a burden, in the vast vast darkness, it can illuminate our path, while we wait for the sun to rise. The night is long, listeners, and hope may sting our hands, but still we hold the flame aloft, and let it guide us through safer paths, to shelter, to safety. When the morning comes it begins with a chill, and then as the dew settles in on the wet grass beneath us, we see the sun reaching its bright tentacles up over the distant mountains. And we have morning.

One of the difficulties of writing a novel is that you can be really excited to write something at a point in the story which you haven’t reached. This is certainly the case with me, and in the past I’ve just written whatever comes, but this time I feel that it’s important to stay with my characters on go on the journey with them. So I find myself needing to hurry up and get to where I want to be without rushing or letting the story suffer.

Writing, or at least the kind of writing that produces a full book, requires discipline, and self-discipline is not something I’ve always excelled at. However, I know from experience that if I just let my ideas sit in my head and never get around to writing them, they’ll lose their magic and their power, and my writing will become stale. There are also days where you just aren’t as good as other days, and you have to keep writing even though you know you’re only operating at about 80% creative power. Today is one of those days. And I had to really push through to keep writing the story. However, I accidentally discovered that there were some really cool aspects of this scene that I hadn’t seen coming. Previously all I had done was write down the majority of the Virgin’s prayer in my notes.

So, the story continues. Because I’m not operating at fully capacity today, I apologize if the text seems a little sloppy, but I’m confident that if I keep pushing myself to write, I’ll stay at the top of my game. And I hope you find today’s installment interesting.

***

They came to the Central Square, which was ironically a very large circle, with a crowd packed in a wide ring around the circle, being held into place by several soldiers in full ceremonial armor. To Lucas’ right, behind the crowd, were the steps leading up to the closed double doors of the Grand Cathedral. Straight ahead, a path led from the circle up the cobblestoned street toward the castle, and as just as Lucas had settled on a spot where he could see through the crowd relatively well, Rex had started pushing his way through the crowd, a hand clasped around Hephaestion’s wrist, who in turn grabbed Eric as he was pulled along, and Lucas was nearly yanked by Eric into the crowd.

Lucas and the others came out at the front, standing at the edge of the ring. Lucas looked ahead toward the road leading to the palace and he could see them.

The sunset had reached it’s apex and the golden light illuminated The Virgins, who were strolling toward the square in two neat single file lines, probably about fourteen in all. They wore long, flowing gowns of fine silk, in pastel colors of robin’s egg blue, canary yellow, pale lavender, and many other colors. No two gowns were alike, and they each wore about their heads fine silk veils, through which their well-kept hair could be seen and their faces could be detected, though the features were always difficult to discern. Lucas had seen this garb before, worn by the Virgin of New Alexandria, who he assumed was among the procession, though even as they approached it was difficult to tell them apart. The hues of their hair could be detected, and the veil was thin around the area where their eyes peered out, and their eyes could be seen well when approached up close, though approaching a Virgin was an honor that had to be bewstowed.Their flowing gowns gave the appearance that they were actually floating toward the Central Square, rather than walking. As they filed into the wide circle, they poured like flowing water to the edges of the circle, and began to move their arms and legs in a slow dance, and at the very back of the procession, a Virgin much older than the others, in a gown and veil of pure white, strolled to the center of the circle. The crowd recognized her and there were a few hushed whispers: this was the Grand Virgin. She knelt down and placed her hands together in silent prayer, bowing her head.

A hush had fallen over the crowd as the Virgins danced, their long sleeves and billowing gowns fluttering in the breeze as they twirled silently, beneath the silk could be seen the universally white garments beneath, hugging tight to their slim bodies. There was no music, no drum playing, but they all seemed to be moving together to the same rhythm, and silence fell heavier and heavier as the dance continued. The men and women watched spellbound as they danced around the edge of the ring.

And then the Virgin in the center lifted her head and stood, and she faced heavenward and began to speak, in a loud, clear voice that was at once commanding and comforting. It was impossible not to hear her voice as it reverberated off the stone walls of the Central Square.

“Our Father,” she began, “Whose heavenly throne is that of pure light…”

Everyone recognized the invocation as the way in which all prayers to the Father began. She continued, and as she spoke the Virgins began to edge closer to the center of the circle, straying from the edges.

“Our master who sees beneath him the toil and suffering of all creatures. Our protector who loves even the stray child. You have sent forth to do your work the Angel, in your love you have sent a Redeemer. Blessed are those who accept the gift you offer freely.”

The Virgins raised their hands in unison, and their dance took on a supplicant quality. Those there eyes were too far away to be visible, it was easy to imagine them filled with longing tears of mourning for the lost.

“Angel of light,” continued the Virgin, “Our teacher. Show unto us unworthy children the path that the Father might have us walk. Give us courage to follow your light. Give us strength to overcome the trail of sorrows. Give us mercy, that we may be lifted from the Yoke of despair.”

The Virgins circled closer to the Grand Virgin now, and the pace of the dance quickened, their silken sleeves flowing in the air, making it impossible to discern one from the other, only a mass of colors in which they all seemed to be one. The voice of the Grand Virgin began to boom and echo across the Square.

“Give us knowledge to know the Father’s path, to hear the words spoken through his messenger. Divine emissary, have patience with we children of darkness, born in sin and trudging through murky waters.”

The Virgins spun furiously, so quickly that their forms were blurs, that it seemed as though the gowns and the figures beneath them had truly become a sphere of light which emanated from it all colors of the spectrum.

The voice of the Grand Virgin became ferocious and powerful. Lucas could hear the emotion in her voice and she struggled to be heard over the silent chorus of color that encircled her, her face and her body invisible within the bright cloud.

“Your alone is the light to eternity! Yours alone is the voice of Heaven! Through you are peace, love, and hope! Through you are wisdom, courage, and strength! Through you is the light made manifest, that the darkness might be driven forever, unto the White City, unto the final age, unto the doom and the resurrection, and unto the end of all things!”

In an instant the Virgins dropped to their knees, and the swirling mass settled around them, their gowns falling to rest on the ground. They seemed so otherworldly within their gowns and veils, as though they were not women at all but spirits dancing, and now the dance was done. Lucas strained to see their chests rising and falling, trying to prove to himself that they were humans who breathed.

The Grand Virgin bowed her head. “In the name of the Father,” she concluded.

An chorus followed from the many voices of the crowd in the Square, “In the name of the Father,” they repeated. The Grand Virgin did this again twice, and each time the crowd responded in the same manner. Lucas did not call back the benediction with the others. He always remained silent during prayers. It wasn’t forbidden, though it usually elicited confused responses. This time no one was paying attention to him. Rex had uttered the benediction each of the three times confidently, his voice quivering, Eric had joined silently, and Hephaestion had said it the first time but not repeated.

Lucas turned to see Rex had tears in his eyes and he reached up with the back of his hand and wipes them away.

The Grand Virgin raised her bowed head and gestured for the others to stand, they did so and then bowed toward to the crowd. The crowd began to applaud and cheer wildly. Lucas could now see smiles on the faces of the Virgins. From the edge of the circle came several members of the New Alexandrian council, one of whom came to stand in the center, and over the chatter he announced that the Feast of the Father would now begin in the dining halls of the Grand Cathedral, and the crowd parted to make way for the Virgins, led by the Grand Virgin, who proceeded again in two single file lines up the steps, and the great doors were opened. The procession of Virgins went inside, and council members filed in behind them, and then the townspeople were allowed to follow.

Lucas tried to stay near to the others and had a hand on Eric’s shirt sleeve, but was quickly knocked around by people clamoring to make it to the Grand Cathedral, and eventually he had to make his way out of the crowd and stand back at the edge of the Central Square and stood on the sidewalk by a storefront, waiting to see his friends in the crowd. He looked among the sea of faces for them but he couldn’t make them out, then suddenly caught a flash of Eric’s red hair in the waning sunlight, and he made his way through the crowd to Lucas and stood on the sidewalk with him. “Rex already went in!” he shouted over the commotion, “Hephaestion is looking for you! I told him if I found you, I’d tell you to wait for him!”

Lucas nodded.

Eric smiled and ran back into the current of people. Lucas found a bench nearby and sat down.

Several minutes passed. Dusk was beginning to fall. The crowd was thinning. People were still proceeding from the other streets into the Central Square and toward the Grand Cathedral. Lucas did not feel particularly hungry, but then, most people attending the Feast of the Father were there for the ceremony and not the food anyway. He found himself lost in thought, remembering the swirling chorus of color from the Virgins, the way their bodies moved so quickly and so silently that they seemed to cease to be human at all.

Lucas had always found Virgins slightly disconcerting. It wasn’t that they were intimidating, in fact it was precisely the fact that looking upon a Virgin seemed to fill everyone with gentle calm that he found so confounding. He never quite understood how or why it happened, but upon beholding a Virgin, people seemed to be filled with peace, and this is why such a large procession of Virgins was such a spectacle. And these Virgins had come from Augustine, the holy city, and the seat of the Church of Light. They were at once revered religious icons and also respected on a level rivaling royalty. To Alexandrians they were respected even more, because New Alexandria had no royal family anymore, only a steward whose position, like the royalty itself, was entirely ceremonial.

Lucas felt something nudge his shoulder and he jumped. He looked beside him to see Hephaestion had sat down next to him, and he leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs, smiling at Lucas. “Pondering the mysteries of existence.”

“It was,” agreed Lucas, and with a sigh he stood, “Off to the Feast then?”

Hephaestion’s warm smile became a sly grin. “I had another idea, actually.”

Lucas tilted his head in genuine bemusement. “Yes?”

“Well,” Hephaestion glanced around, and though the crowd had thinned there were still plenty of people passing by, though none seemed particularly interested in the two young men. “Remember last week when you told me about the royal library?”

“The one in the castle,” remembered Lucas, “Yeah, it’s closed up. No one tends it anymore, I tried to convince my father to give me the position of the library’s retainer, but he said it was a foolish request and that I should focus more on my studies.”

“But you said you’ve seen it before, right?” asked Hephaestion.

“Well yes,” said Lucas, “But I was much younger, and it’s back when the library was actually open. Now it’s closed off along with the rest of the royal wing of the castle, even the Steward doesn’t live there.”

“But you know how to get there, yes?” asked Hephaestion.

Lucas furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “Well… yes?” he ventured.

“Excellent!” Hephaestion leapt to his feet, “Then we’re going on an adventure!”

Lucas’ eyes widened, “Hephaestion, we can’t go into the royal wing, we can’t even go into the castle!”

“Your father is still there, right?” asked Hephaestion.

“Yes, he probably is, but he of all people wouldn’t let us in.”

Hephaestion shook his head with a grin, “We tell the guards you’re there to see your father and they let us in, and then we sneak into the royal wing!”

Lucas folded his arms. “What’s gotten into you?” he asked amusedly, “You’re not usually this mischievous.”

It was now that Hephaestion indicated a brown satchel on the bench behind him. Lucas suddenly realized that Hephaestion had been carrying it since joining the party after the bout, but hadn’t thought about it or wondered what it might contain. “Well,” said Hephaestion, “I may have found something I’d like to share with you,” and at this he made a gesture with his hand that indicated drinking, “and I’d like to do so in a private location,” he waggled his eyebrows impishly.

Lucas breath caught in his chest for a moment, then asked “Where did you get… that?”

“Borrowed,” said Hephaestion with a grin, “From the stores beneath the military academy. I’ll tell you the story later.”

Lucas raised his eyebrows, “And of all the private locations, you choose a secluded area of the palace?”

Hephaestion folded his arms in mock annoyance, “Are you up for it or not?” he asked in an entirely friendly tone.

Lucas shook his head, “Fine, I didn’t really want to go to the Feast anyway. But you know my father will eventually be leaving the castle, and if he doesn’t notice us, he’ll certainly notice my absence from the Feast.”

Hephaestion waved a hand, “That thing goes on for hours, we’ll be back before he notices you’re gone.”

“What about Rex and Eric?” asked Lucas.

Hephaestion looked thoughtful, “Well, I kind of wanted to spend some time with you.”

Lucas’ heart jumped into his throat and he swallowed quietly. “Alright,” he said finally, “But we need to go quickly while there’s still a crowd. Security at the palace is pretty relaxed under most circumstances, but we’ll probably find the place positively deserted if we can make it through the front gate guards.”

“Yes!” Hephaestion whispered and snatched up his satchel. “Lead the way!”

Guys, I’m a little shaken up right now. Earlier I posted a link to an article about how a woman went for a hike to try and deal with the grief she was feeling over Hillary Clinton’s loss in the election, and she actually ran into Hillary and Bill hiking there as well. I reposted the article and commented on how strong Hillary is. I said that when I got the news, I stayed in bed for three days, in mourning. When she found out she lost, three days later she’s hiking with her husband. I was so inspired by how strong she is.

My post was set to public, and something very unsettling happened. I got a message from a complete stranger who I guess has nothing better to do than to go through the list of people who have shared the article and make comments, because he sent me a message with a voice memo instead of actually typing. It sounded like he was driving. Which means that not only did he feel what you’re about to read was necessary, but he felt it so necessary that he had to dictate it by voice to a stranger while driving.

Here’s what he said.

“You stayed in your room for three days after the election? You are such a pussy. Get off your ass and fucking do something for the country, instead of staying in your bedroom and fucking pouting over Hillary not winning.”

I was so shocked that I wasn’t really sure what to do. But… his tone wasn’t angry. It seemed to be disappointed. Like a friend who was trying to motivate me. The things he said were cruel, but he did SEEM to have good intentions. So I responded.

My response. Note that I checked out his profile in the meantime and saw that he was a straight, married white man.

“I stayed in bed because I have debilitating anxiety, and I’m a gay non-Christian living in the south. Its not exactly easy to get out there and do something when you’re hated for who you are. As a straight, white man [I had checked out his profile at this point and saw that he was indeed a married, straight white guy], I get that you don’t understand what its like to be discriminated against. You feel so privileged that you thought it was appropriate to send a voice message to a stranger on Facebook putting them down for something you don’t understand. But I’m not going to let bullying, by you or by Trump, dictate how I should feel or act.”

He responded with another voice memo.

“Listen, gays are accepted everywhere, being homosexual is normal in this world. Bisexual is normal in this world. Whatever feels good is acceptable in this world. Don’t use you being gay and the world is against you to stop you from doing what you have to do in life. Look on TV, there’s gay people EVERYWHERE. Gay is accepted, I don’t know why you say that you’re having such a hard time being gay. That’s an excuse, get off your soap box. Trump’s the best thing that’s gonna happen to this country, trust me on that one.”

At this point I was kind of shaking, but I responded again.

“I know you THINK gay people are accepted everywhere, but you’re wrong. You live in CALIFORNIA. I live in South Carolina. You’re a straight white guy. Please don’t attempt to tell me that you know better than I do what it’s like to be a discriminated minority.”

His response was in a dismissive but not altogether angry tone.

“Well then move to California. As a matter of fact, move to San Francisco, PERFECT for ya.”

I have to stop here to comment on the privilege it must take to be driving in your car, and decide to harass a gay kid on the other side of the country via voice memos, and then have the audacity to tell him “Well just MOVE to California, then!” As though that’s something everyone can do. It would be wrong of me to assume he’s a rich suburbanite, but I can’t imagine who grew up as poor as I did has any idea how impossible moving, especially across the country, really is.

I sent him one final message.

“I don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing by this, but I just want you to take a look at yourself, and realize that you just sent a stranger on Facebook a barrage of voice messages chiding him for not handling being discriminated against in the way you would prefer. I get the weird feeling you’re trying to be helpful, but you aren’t. You are being condescending and refusing to see past your own privilege. You, a straight man in California, are lecturing me, a gay man in the south, on why it’s incorrect that I think I’m discriminated against.”

I didn’t wait for him to respond, I blocked him.

I guess… this is what it’s come to. Now that Donald Trump has won, people feel that they now just have the right to harass anyone they choose. What’s most puzzling to me is the tone of his voice in these messages. He wasn’t screaming, he didn’t even sound angry. He sounded annoyed. And when he started dictating what I should do, he had this tone of voice like “of COURSE this is what you should do, why didn’t you THINK of this?”. It was condescending, and it was scary. When I came to sit down and write this I realized I was shaking all over.

This is not an isolated incident. Far, far worse is happening all around the country, from graffiti threatening gay people, Muslims and black people, to the KKK displaying solidarity with Donald Trump, all around the country, the bigots think that now their candidate has won, they have the right to come out of the bigoted closet and speak their hatred and vitriol loudly and without consequence.

Part of me wants to raise my fist in the air and say we refuse to take it. Part of me wants to say that in achieving this victory, the bigots have identified themselves and can now be defeated. That they’ve become complacent now, that they think our struggle towards equality is over, clinched in their favor, and that their complacency is the opportunity we have to boot their hatred out of our society forever.

But another part of me just wants to curl up in the corner and fear for everyone. For myself. For Muslims. For women. For black people. For hispanic people. For transgender people. If this is what happened to me, what must be happening to other people around the country right now, trying to express themselves and have their voices heard?

I honestly don’t know what I think will happen. Part of me thinks this is well and truly the end of America, that this will be what causes a mass eruption of violence, protests, and bloody civil unrest to rival the likes of Egypt. Another part of me thinks that this is all bluster and showmanship, that bigots only think they’ve won and will soon discover they’ve gained much less ground than they thought, and by identifying themselves they make it easier to suss out the hate-mongers among us and put a stop to their campaigns of oppression.

But I don’t know.

I truly don’t know.

UPDATE: To my dismay, I discovered that because my post was public, a lot of strangers started commenting on it. I’ve since deleted it, but here are a selection of some of the comments. This is what’s happened. People feel entitled to say things like this. This is the culture of bullying that Trump has legitimized.